Jim Parsons, Rihanna to voice animated characters in 'Home'

LOS ANGELES, July 22 (UPI) -- Jim Parsons and Rihanna voice a pair of unlikely friends in Home.

The new Dreamworks animated film is an adaptation of Adam Rex's children's book The True Meaning of Smekday. The story follows a girl named Tip (Rihanna) whose mother (Jennifer Lopez) is abducted by a race of invading aliens called Boov. She teams up with one of the creatures, named Oh (Jim Parsons), and the pair set out to save the world in what director Tim Johnson calls a "post-apocalyptic alien invasion buddy comedy."

"Never a stranger combo has the world depended on for survival," Johnson jokes to Entertainment Weekly. "I feel like I'm working with actors and not technically animation. I can talk about intention, motivation and emotion, and the amazing animators are able to do the rest."

Home is the second film after How to Train Your Dragon 2 to be made with a new animation system at Dreamworks, and the director says animation technology has grown "leaps and bounds" since he directed Antz in 1998. He also hopes to bring a creative spin to the sci-fi genre, which he feels "can be very narrow and self-imitating and can get stuck in a rut."

Home is scheduled for release March 27, 2015. The movie also stars Steve Martin as Captain Smek, the leader of the Boov.